REU in Applied Computational Robotics

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an REU?

REU stands for 'research experience for undergraduates'. It's a summer opportunity for undergraduate students to learn about the research process in their field and to conduct their own original research.

Participants work closely with faculty mentors, graduate students, and other REU participants on cutting edge problems. Participating in an REU can give you a chance to apply what you've learned inside the classroom to real-world, unanswered problems. Along the way, you'll learn a little about possible future careers that include research.

Beyond just research, REU participants have the opportunity to receive professional development training that will assist them both in their current research and in their future careers, as well as the opportunity to network with other like-minded undergraduates.

I don't have experience with robots. Can I still apply?

Yes! The program is designed to be accessible to students that don't have experience working with robots. We provide a "robotics bootcamp" in the first week to help everyone get up and running, and leave lots of room for learning more along the way.

I don't have experience with research yet. Is this program for me?

Yes! One of our goals is to help the participants learn what research is all about and to learn how to be successful as a researcher. Learning about the different phases of the research process, both broadly and in robotics specifically, is a big part of the program. And every participant works closely with a mentor every step of the way.

What kind of project will I work on?

Each participant will work on a research project, selected based on the participants' background and interests and scaled to be reasonable for the summer. The projects will be individual projects (rather than in groups) but there are often connections between many of the projects.

I've heard that publishing papers can help with getting into graduate school. Will I be able to publish the results of my project?

Yes! We try to make sure that every project has a clear path toward being publishable work at the cutting edge of robotics research, if that is one of your goals. Here are a few papers that participants in prior years have been published:

Yitong Lu, Anuruddha Bhattacharjee, Conlan C. Taylor, Julien Leclerc, Jason M. O'Kane, MinJun Kim Aaron T. Becker, Closed-Loop Control of Magnetic Modular Cubes for 2D Self-Assembly. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 8(9) pp. 5998–6005, September 2023.
Rachel Moan, Victor Montano, Aaron Becker, Jason M. O'Kane, Aggregation and localization of simple robots in curved environments, In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2020.
Marios Xanthidis, Nare Karapetyan, Hunter Damron, Sharmin Rahman, James Johnson, Allison O'Connell, Jason M. O'Kane, Ioannis Rekleitis, Navigation in the Presence of Obstacles for an Agile Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2020.
Jeremy S. Lewis, Daniel Feshbach, Jason M. O'Kane, Guaranteed Coverage with a Blind Unreliable Robot, In Proc. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2018.

Photo of a previous cohort, many wearing brightly-colored shirts.

How do I apply?

Application details are available here.

Can I get more information?

Yes! You can contact Professor Jason O'Kane at Image of PI's email address. with any questions.

Are there other REU programs?

Yes! If our program is not a good fit, you might also be interested to learn about some of the other NSF-funded REU sites.